Paramount's Clip Strategy: Pay Us, Or Don't

Movie clips online = great promotion, right? Not according to Viacom's Paramount: The movie studio thinks they can be money generators, too.

The company is launching a service where players in the virtual worlds vMTV (owned by Viacom) and There.com (Makena Technologies) can get Parmount movie clips and display them above their virtual heads … for $1 a piece.

We're assuming that Paramount will argue that these are the virtual world's equivalent of ring tones: Not content as much as "personalization" bric a brac. But to us they look like ads for Paramount movies. Just like the clips Paramount offers through its VooZoo app on Facebook -- for free.

So if you want to play a line from "Grease" while you’re hanging out in the virtual “Pimp My Ride” room, you’ll have to pay a dollar. Meanwhile the millions of people that have lives can do the same thing, gratis.